Orleans Levee Board

From 1890 through 2006, the Orleans Levee Board was the body in charge of supervising the levee and floodwall system in Orleans Parish, Louisiana, which is intended to protect the city of New Orleans from flooding. The role included requirements definition prior to construction, operation, and ongoing maintenance. Over the years the Board also took on various activities relating to land use on and around the levees. In the wake of the catastrophic engineering failures sustained by New Orleans' levee and floodwall system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's landfall, two new regional flood protection authorities were created to supersede multiple parochial levee boards, including Orleans Parish's Levee Board. Most of the Orleans Levee District now falls under the jurisdiction of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, charged with the oversight of all flood protection infrastructure for Greater New Orleans on the East Bank of the Mississippi River. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-West possesses the same metro-wide jurisdiction for the West Bank of the Mississippi, and includes that portion of the Orleans Levee District on the West Bank (i.e., Algiers).

Until the end of 2006, the Orleans Levee Board was a major governmental entity that functioned independently of municipal government in and around Orleans Parish, Louisiana. (Orleans Parish is coextensive with the city of New Orleans; their boundaries are one and the same). The purpose of the agency governed by the Orleans Levee Board, the Orleans Levee District, was to protect New Orleans from flooding, and to protect and operate the equipment placed and assigned for that purpose. Starting in the 1920s the Board undertook a massive flood protection initiative involving the construction of a stepped seawall several hundred feet north of a portion of the existing south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The intervening area was filled to several feet above sea level and was to serve as a "super levee" protecting the city from Lake Pontchartrain storm surge. This "lakefill" land reclamation project ultimately was developed to include Lakeshore Drive, the residential subdivisions of Lakeshore, Lake Vista, Lake Terrace and Lake Oaks, the principal campus of the University of New Orleans ("UNO"), the UNO Research & Technology Park, the New Orleans Lakefront Airport, hundreds of acres of public parks, and a number of commercial areas. This project resulted in the Orleans Levee Board's deep engagement in land development, long-term leases, greenspace maintenance, marina operation and, once Louisiana legalized gaming in 1992, casino gambling. Such activities led critics of the Board to accuse its members of being more concerned with lucrative subsidiary activities than with what was their Board's primary assigned task (flood protection).